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That Can't Be True with Chelsea Clinton
What Actually Happens in the Delivery Room with Jen Hamilton
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- [00:02]
Jen Hamilton
Lemonade. Amazon Pharmacy presents painful thoughts. Of course I see my co worker
- [00:13]
Chelsea Clinton
in line at the pharmacy. Can you tell I'm picking up prescription hemorrhoid cream?
- [00:17]
Jen Hamilton
I'm probably standing. Weird.
- [00:19]
Chelsea Clinton
Why is he smiling? He knows he's gonna call me hemorrhoid Lloyd tomorrow. I know it. I gotta quit my job.
- [00:27]
Jen Hamilton
Next time, avoid awkward conversations and get fast free delivery with amaz. Pharmacy healthcare just got less painful.
- [00:41]
Chelsea Clinton
Welcome to that Can't Be True, a show that sorts fact from fiction, especially on issues impacting our health. I'm Chelsea Clinton. My guest today has spent years in labor and delivery rooms. Jen Hamilton is a labor and delivery nurse who has built one of the most trusted and honestly, one of the most entertaining voices of maternal health on social media. Thankfully, it's also empowering. She's here to chat about what she sees on the front lines of childbirth, what she wants any woman who is thinking about getting pregnant, who is pregnant, who is about to deliver a baby, who may have recently delivered a baby. Just what she wants all of us to know. She also has a brand new book called Birth Vibes and it's an entertaining but to stay on theme, importantly, informative and empowering read. So if you are pregnant, if you know someone, especially if you love someone who is thinking about getting pregnant or is pregnant, I think it's really worth your time and I hope you'll read it. I'm so excited for this conversation.
- [01:53]
Jen Hamilton
Hi, Chelsea, Motherfork and Clinton. What is happening right now?
- [01:57]
Chelsea Clinton
I'm very happy to be here with you. I'm sorry to be a little bit late. I broke my pinky in the oh no marathon. And I just candidly have already spent about, like, 30 minutes talking to different people about, like, trying to schedule my MRI now after my X ray. But really, Jen, thank you so much. I'm excited for our conversation today and I thought before we spend a lot of time.
- [02:21]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah.
- [02:22]
Chelsea Clinton
Talking about all things related to kind of pregnancy and birth. You have chickens?
- [02:30]
Jen Hamilton
I do. I do have chickens.
- [02:32]
Chelsea Clinton
Like, chickens first? Of course.
- [02:35]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah.
- [02:35]
Chelsea Clinton
Were you always interested in chickens?
- [02:37]
Jen Hamilton
Oh, God, no. My husband wanted chickens, like from when we got married. He's like, oh, someday we'll have chickens. I was like, it was one of those things. I was like, yeah, sure. Okay. Whatever.
- [02:46]
Chelsea Clinton
Did he grow up on a farm?
- [02:48]
Jen Hamilton
No. Neither of us. No.
- [02:49]
Chelsea Clinton
He just was like, I need to have chickens at some point in my life.
- [02:52]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah. So I was at work one day, I was an emergency room nurse and I called him just to check in. What are you doing and he said, I'm at Southern states now. That is a place in North Carolina that is like tractor supply. And he said, I'm getting food. And I said, food for what? And he said, chickens with an S at the end. And I said, you better not, you better not have gotten chickens. And then I came home and he had five, which was the, the city maximum that you could have five babies. And then you, like, get into it. Like you're, you know, they grow up. And then I became like a special needs chicken lady that people would say, like, hey, I have this chicken that's got problems. Will, will you. Will you let it live in your house?
- [03:43]
Chelsea Clinton
You're like, I went to school to take care of humans. Like, I didn't go to vet school. At least I don't think you did.
- [03:49]
Jen Hamilton
No, no, no, wait.
- [03:50]
Chelsea Clinton
And how did your human children react to the chicken children?
- [03:54]
Jen Hamilton
Oh, it's, it's normal to them, you know, because. And we did have cats. We have cats in the house too. So like, they all just, you know, get along. It's great. And then one of my most viral videos was me swaddling, because I'm a labor and delivery nurse, you know, I got to swaddle the chicken. So I've got some chicken swaddling videos that did very well.
- [04:13]
Chelsea Clinton
Same swaddling cloth that you would use for a human child or did you have to get like bespoke chicken swaddling cloth?
- [04:21]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah, I've swaddled little baby chicks. So for that I would use like the microfiber cloth that they give you to clean your glasses. You know, the little one.
- [04:29]
Chelsea Clinton
Yeah.
- [04:29]
Jen Hamilton
And then of course.
- [04:30]
Chelsea Clinton
Cause the human ones would be too big.
- [04:32]
Jen Hamilton
It's too big. Yeah. Too big.
- [04:33]
Chelsea Clinton
Yeah. That's so sweet.
- [04:35]
Jen Hamilton
Well, all right, now that we've talked
- [04:37]
Chelsea Clinton
so much about chickens, let's talk about humans. Yeah. I have so many questions. I thought, though, as a segue into all the questions, we could start with our that can't be true segment where we play some tape that's been percolating recently and get your reaction. So here's some recent commentary from Mallory DeMille who is known for covering the wellness industry. And she's talking in front of an article since we're just gonna hear it and not see the visual about wild births.
- [05:08]
Jen Hamilton
Okay.
- [05:09]
Mallory DeMille
This article might be the final boss in why you should not be taking medical advice from influencers is a year long investigation into the free birth society. And it reveals how mothers lost children after being radicalized by uplifting podcast tales of births. Without midwives or doctors. And in case you've been blissfully unaware, free birth or wild birth basically means that during birth and often during pregnancy, there are no medical professionals involved. There's often no testing, no monitoring. It is a completely unassisted birth. There are specifically two women who are trying to sell you on this who are covered in this article. Emily and Yolande. Emily and Yolande actually argue that free birth is safer than birth with medical support. In my opinion, that might be in part because Emily and Yolande have a lot of free birthing courses to sell you. Though I have no doubt that the two of them truly believe the bad information and conspiracy theories that they're sharing. And yet they are the ones that have a year long investigation tying their content to babies around the world.
- [06:00]
Chelsea Clinton
Not making it so Jen, I confess, until I read the article that Mallory is referencing, I was unaware of wild births or free births. For anyone listening who similarly you may not have been aware at all or aware of how much reach kind of at least the narrative around free birth and wild birth currently is having. What's your expert opinion on it and on this movement?
- [06:33]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah, yeah. One thing that I am just an absolute proponent for is for people to be able to make their own informed and empowered decisions. The trouble with free birth or wild pregnancy is that you're not able to get all the information that you need to be able to make an informed and empowered decision for yourself. The problem with it lies in only relying on your own intuition. I think that's a big thing that people in the free birth community talk about and rely on is saying that like your own intuition is what's going to keep you and your baby safe. I don't want it to be a negative on home birth per se. I know that. I know that home birth can be safe for a lot of people, but I think that it really just depends on who you have around you and when you're having a free birth. There's no one you know.
- [07:34]
Chelsea Clinton
I so appreciate the framing of informed and empowered and also that you referenced intuition. I was really surprised when I was pregnant with my first our daughter Charlotte, how many people said, oh well, you're, you're just going to know how to do things. And I remember thinking, but no, I'm not actually like even when we were talking about swaddling earlier, I was so grateful to the labor and delivery nurses around me when I was in the hospital who taught me how to swaddle my newborn, who answered my questions about breastfeeding like I had never done that before.
- [08:11]
Jen Hamilton
Right. I remember I was a full grown ER nurse at the time when my first baby threw up for the first time. Okay. I clean up, throw up constantly in the er. I remember calling my mom, crying, saying, what do I do? Because it's, I mean, whenever it's your baby, maybe it, you know, you kind of can get a little blindsided in like, hoping that you're doing the right thing. So, yeah, I think that being a mother is, is also about a village, you know, like helping each other and relying on, on the ones that have gone before. And that includes midwives and, and obs who, who have gone before and who have. They know a thing or two because they've seen a thing or two. And so, you know, our ultimate job is, is to be able to protect people from those things that can happen. And is there a whole lot that needs to be done in obstetrical care? A hundred million percent. And I think that in the ways that we think about free birth, I think one of the ways that we need to think about it is why would someone choose that? Why would someone feel safer doing it alone than in the care of someone? And it all boils down to not feeling safe in the spaces where medical people are. It could come from someone having a really bad experience with someone who didn't listen to them, who wasn't kind to them, who felt out of control in their body, in the care of someone else. So I think that when we have a conversation about free birth or wild pregnancy, there has to be a discussion of why and recognizing that in order to do better.
- [09:49]
Chelsea Clinton
Well, and we have a lot of evidence, not only in relationship to pregnancy or postpartum, but in many different arena, that women are historically listened to less by medical providers. And so I think your question about why is a really important one. I do, though, want to go back to. I think your really helpful framing again, of informed and empowered. And I know something that you've recently paid attention to is the kind of false claim that drawing blood can cause miscarriages.
- [10:28]
Jen Hamilton
Right.
- [10:28]
Chelsea Clinton
When we know how important actually our blood really can be to helping kind of give us information to be empowered. Are you surprised by that kind of, it seems to me, relatively new bit of kind of Internet misinformation.
- [10:45]
Jen Hamilton
So nothing surprises me anymore. I wish that it did. It makes me turn my head sideways like a dog sometimes. Like where? How could you possibly. Never really thought about that posture.
- [10:58]
Chelsea Clinton
Okay.
- [10:58]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah. But I think one of the biggest telltale signs of something that could Be misinformation is twofold. One, lack of evidence, right? Like, they're not showing you where this is coming from. And number two, they got a link in their bio in order to sell you a thing that's going to prevent whatever bad thing they're talking about happening or give you whatever positive effect they're going for. So I think that person in particular that we're talking about, holy smokes on the link tree, holy cow, that person has all sorts of things to sell you, things to sell you in order to keep you safe. And. And I think that it's absolutely disgusting when they grift towards people who are either pregnant or trying to get pregnant.
- [11:52]
Chelsea Clinton
I agree.
- [11:52]
Jen Hamilton
I mean, you, you have so many people who would do anything. And so when you're telling them, hey, getting a blood draw can cause a miscarriage, well, they think, oh, man. Well, the last time I was pregnant, I got my blood drawn and then I miscarried, you know, a few weeks later. When those two things have nothing to do with each other, there's such an easy way that they can connect that in their brain and then going into the next pregnancy not get care that could keep them safe in other ways.
- [12:23]
Chelsea Clinton
Are there any other misinformation bits around pregnancy or birthing that have really annoyed you recently? I was gonna ask, surprised, but you said nothing surprises you any longer.
- [12:34]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah, I think one of the ones that is most pervasive, I'll say, is there's a lot of people who are declining vitamin K for their babies. And it comes from a lot of people on the Internet who misunderstand something called the black box warning that's on a vitamin K lab. So in order to understand this, you gotta know that we've given babies vitamin K standardly since about 1960 because they had a lot of babies that were just dying from. From bleeding for no reason. And babies aren't able to tell us, hey, my head hurts, or hey, my belly hurts, they cry. And that's what babies do. So we don't know that something's wrong until they're having a seizure, not conscious. Like, it takes a long time to understand, like, the true gravity of what's going on. So babies are born with low stores of something called vitamin K, which is the key needed to unlock the clotting factors that you have in your body. Now we're low in vitamin K because it doesn't cross well through the placenta. So you could eat hella vitamin K your entire pregnancy and still have low stores of vitamin K in your gut in order to be able to clot your own blood. So about 1 in 60 to 1 in 250 babies, depending on the study that you're looking at, if they do not have vitamin K at birth to help them to clot their blood, 1 in 60 to, to 1 in 250 will experience something called vitamin K deficiency bleeding and 1 in 4 of those babies will die. So when you're looking at the statistic like it's, it's such high.
- [14:21]
Chelsea Clinton
Devastating. It's devastating.
- [14:23]
Jen Hamilton
Absolutely. So since about 1960, we've given babies a one time fat soluble injection of vitamin K that covers them till they're about six months old. So it prevents that, that bleeding. But there is a black box warning on the vitamin K label. Now that comes because vitamin K is also the antidote to a medication called warfarin or Coumad. Now when adults who need their blood to be thinned take too much of warfarin or Coumadin, they can begin to hemorrhage. Now in these hemorrhages, because vitamin K is the antidote, they give them large quantities of vitamin K. In those patients, there can be bad outcomes. What I want to make very clear is when you see that vitamin K can cause death on a black box warning, what that is referring to is when vitamin K is used as the antidote to warfarin, what people see is, oh, they're wanting to give my baby vitamin K, it can make my baby die. I want to be unapologetically clear when I say in the history of humanity there is never ever, ever, ever, ever been a baby that has died from a vitamin K injection given at birth to prevent vitamin K deficiency bleeding. There have been so many babies that have died because they did not get the vitamin K. There was one vitamin K allergic reaction in Turkey in 2014 and that baby did a. Okay. And they weren't even sure that that was exactly what it was from. But when patients or parents are declining vitamin K for their baby, it makes me worried. It just makes me worried for when they go home. You have new parents who are dealing with a crying baby. And like I said, a lot of times you don't know that something is wrong until it's too late. And so it's not something that you can delay cord clamp enough to, to get vitamin extra vitamin K through the cord because it doesn't pass well through the placenta. That's another thing that I hear. And it also doesn't cross well through breast milk. So I hear people Tell me I'm not going to give vitamin K because I'm going to delay cord clamping and I'm going to breastfeed. Delaying cord clamping does not give you extra vitamin K. And being breastfed is one of the biggest risk factors for vitamin K deficiency bleeding because it does not pass well through breast milk either. So that's the one that really has, I think, one of the the biggest risks to it, if we believe. But I understand why people are afraid of vitamin K. When you have people saying, oh, there's a black box warning and it can cause death. Now when I hear people say that, I automatically know I don't know what that means. So that's the one that I spend the most time at work informing. But again, if I give them all the information that they need and they still do not want to do it, I have to respect that decision.
- [17:42]
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
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- [19:20]
Jen Hamilton
painful thoughts I I can't stop scratching my downtown.
- [19:26]
Chelsea Clinton
Yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here
- [19:31]
Jen Hamilton
to talk about my downtown.
- [19:34]
Chelsea Clinton
Some things you'd rather type than say out loud.
- [19:37]
Jen Hamilton
There's no question too embarrassing for Amazon Health. AI chat your symptoms and get virtual care 24. 7 Healthcare just got less painful.
- [19:49]
Chelsea Clinton
One of the things that I hear discussed a lot are the rising preeclampsia rates here in the United States. I wonder if you could walk us through kind of what preeclampsia is. What does that mean?
- [20:03]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah.
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Chelsea Clinton
What's happening in our bodies? What are the warning signs that people maybe miss?
- [20:08]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah. So preeclampsia is a high blood pressure disorder of pregnancy. So it can start, you know, a little past the middle of pregnancy. And we believe that it comes from the placenta. And there's studies that say, you know, it comes from the male contribution to the placenta, which I'm going to believe wholeheartedly as a theory, because we can blame them for something, you know. But preeclampsia, big bad, can cause seizures. It's called pre eclampsia, meaning pre before eclampsia seizure. Right. So all of these symptoms and having the high blood pressure can affect your organs, can affect your brain, which is an organ, can cause seizures. And the seizures themselves can be dangerous to your life, can cause damage to your kidneys, to your heart. It can. If we let preeclampsia develop into eclampsia, tis big bad. So I think that it's important to know that, you know, as we're talking about preeclampsia, what I hope is that preeclampsia gets diagnosed more, because catching it early can make sure that we're keeping people safe. So I had preeclampsia with my second baby. And for me, what the symptoms started out were with were I had severe swelling. And I was an ER nurse at the time. So throughout this conversation, while I'm talking about it, I want you to understand I knew very little about labor and delivery, which is why I kind of let things go like I did. So don't judge me for not knowing anything, because I really didn't. But I was, like, 35 weeks pregnant. I started to notice, like, my feet were getting a little puffy. And my husband would wake up with me in the morning and help me put on my shoes, because at that point I was like, it's hard to bend over. You know, it's really hard to tie your shoes at 35 weeks pregnant and he is trying to put on my compression socks and he's like, this is not. This is not working. And then he's like, well, maybe let's just try the shoes. He flipped the tongue out. Like, took all the laces out, and I still could not get my toes in the shoes.
- [22:27]
Chelsea Clinton
That's scary.
- [22:27]
Jen Hamilton
I know. So I was like, well, I can't call out of work because my feet are fat. Like, that's not a good reason. So I went to work barefoot.
- [22:37]
Mallory DeMille
And.
- [22:38]
Chelsea Clinton
What, they let you go to work barefoot?
- [22:40]
Jen Hamilton
No one let me. I let myself.
- [22:42]
Chelsea Clinton
You were walking around the emergency department barefoot?
- [22:46]
Jen Hamilton
No. So I walk in and what I do is I get the. There's like these paper booties that go over your shoes Normally.
- [22:53]
Chelsea Clinton
Yes.
- [22:54]
Jen Hamilton
So I just covered up my feet with those. And when my friends found out that, like, I was barefoot underneath of that, and I showed them, they're like, something is wrong with you. Like, this is not good.
- [23:06]
Chelsea Clinton
Like, Jen, get yourself to the doctor. Oh, wait, how convenient. Oh, wait, how convenient.
- [23:12]
Jen Hamilton
So I went into a, like a empty room and I checked my blood pressure and it started dinging. And my friend was walking by, but knew that there wasn't supposed to be a patient in there. So she opened the door and she looked up at the screen. It was like 167 over 110.
- [23:27]
Chelsea Clinton
Yikes.
- [23:28]
Jen Hamilton
So I went to the. To the maternity ER. They took me out of work and they put me on blood pressure medicine, but I wasn't having any of the other symptoms. Like, I didn't have headache. So let's talk about symptoms, right? Swelling, headache, blurred vision, seeing spots, chest pain, upper right, belly pain, or really sometimes you just feel weird or you feel off. Now, I kept taking the blood pressure medicine and I would check it and stuff. And so there was one day that I woke up. And what woke me up was that I could feel my heartbeat in my lips and in my fingers. And I was like, I just feel off. So I got up and I checked my blood pressure. It was like 180 over 110. And then I called my doctor, and they actually did not call me back, but I didn't want to bother anybody. I was like, you know, I. I have this, like, people pleasing attitude. Like, it's probably fine. I. They're probably very busy. So I just ended up going to my regular appointment. And whenever I got there, my doctor saw me. He's like, you're gonna have a baby today. You're gonna have a baby today. And one thing about preeclampsia that I don't have any hard data on, but sometimes when you're preeclampsic and you're in your body gets into labor, like we induce you or whatever it take. It can take a long time to get you into labor, but once you get into labor, your body's like, get this baby out of me. And it really quickly, which is what it did for me. Wow. Yeah. After I had my baby, I feel like feeling so terrible. Before I had my baby made me feel like a supermodel whenever I was like two weeks postpartum because I started peeing out all that fluid. You couldn't tell me nothing. I felt great. Which I know is not the. The most normal postpartum experience, but I think just because I felt bad for so long, just being free from the fluid, free from this, like looking like that, I was ready to be done. So I felt great afterwards.
- [25:31]
Chelsea Clinton
Yeah, well, I was thinking about preeclampsia. I was also thinking about gestational diabetes and how important it is that women have this information so that we can take blood pressure for medicine, see our doctors more frequently, be more empowered. In your language, for sure. I wonder if you can talk to us a little bit about gestational diabetes too, and what you think people should know.
- [25:52]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah, so there's also a lot of misinformation about getting tested for gestational diabetes. There's a lot of fear mongering around, like the test for it. So the test is it's a very sweet drink. And so when you drink it, what you're doing is you're testing, you're kind of like stress testing your body's ability to process that glucose. Sometimes in pregnancy, there's a problem with processing that glucose. And if you have extra glucose that's in your bloodstream, glucose crosses the placenta. To your baby insulin, which keeps glucose in check, it allows that glucose to be used for energy. Insulin does not cross the placenta. Well, so what happens in your baby is that your baby has all this extra sugar. And when we don't use sugar for energy, what happens is we have that deposit as fat. And in babies, it deposits in their cheeks and in their shoulders, which makes them very cute, but can also make them harder to get out. And it makes them chunky. They, they, they get a lot bigger. Um, and yes, that's cute and sweet, but it also can be dangerous for getting a very large baby out. Um, another danger is that, you know, your baby is having to make their own insulin to keep up with all this extra sugar. So when your baby comes out, they're cranking out this insulin with, not. With not being attached anymore to the Sugar factory and they can drop their blood sugar very low. There's other things that can happen. But if we don't know that we have gestational diabetes, we don't have the information to make it. Informed and empowered decisions. There is only one, I'm gonna say, alternative to the glucose tolerance test, and that is the fresh. So some people don't want to take the glucose tolerance test because they don't want extra dyes. There's a dye free version if people don't want that, but they don't want extra dyes or they don't like the chemicals or whatever. There's something called the fresh test. This is not sponsored. It is basically like another flavor of glucose tolerance test that doesn't have, like, the things that a lot of people sometimes get upset about being in, in a drink like that. So it's like a little powder that you can mix and drink. Uh, I highly recommend the glucose tolerance test.
- [28:31]
Chelsea Clinton
Now, thinking about once someone is planning for their birth or maybe in the hospital, if they've chosen to deliver in a hospital setting instead of at home, hopefully accompanied with a midwife, I think there's a lot of intense, intense debates around epidurals. Whether or not they have clinical evidence, whether or not it's harmful to you or the baby, whether or not somehow it's more moral to have the full experience, whether it's more natural. What, if any of that do you think has real data behind it and what doesn't? And what do you want people to know?
- [29:17]
Jen Hamilton
I want people to know that they can feel as much or as little as they want to feel of their birth experience. I tell people I will be your cheerleader if you do not want an epidural, and I will be your fairy drug mother if you do. I'm here to be with you. But I think it's great to prepare not just for the birth that you want, but also for the birth you don't want. So in going into your birth experience, if you've prepared your entire pregnancy to go without an epidural, I think it's also good to prepare for. Well, if I'm in labor for, you know, know, 48 hours and I get exhausted, I think it's important to know about an epidural as a tool. Use it as a tool in your toolbox instead of something that you'll never, ever do. Because sometimes I have patients who are very disappointed because they didn't prepare for that. And now they are going into this not feeling very informed. But on the Flip side of that, I think it's great for people who are preparing to go into labor and have an epidural to think about what it would be like without one. Because sometimes you go in and girl, you're going too quick, that baby's going to come out before we get an epidural. Or maybe the epidural doesn't work. What, like, what kind of coping techniques do we have to manage pain if the epidural doesn't work or we can't get one? So I think that going into labor and birth, it's awesome to have a dream in mind, a dream, A dream birth plan of thinking about exactly how you would like things to do to go. But also let's learn about some of the ways that it might go differently and understand that we can give ourselves grace and know that the things that we have to offer you in labor and birth are tools in a toolbox. They are neither inherently good nor evil.
- [31:09]
Chelsea Clinton
I always responded when I was asked about my birth plan, that my birth plan was my doctor. And I feel really fortunate that I could say that because I did trust my doctor and know that isn't always true. Certainly not as true as it should be. Curious, too, how you talk to people who might need to be induced, because I think that's another area where sometimes women are like, I'm never gonna be induced. And sometimes actually it's clinically imperative.
- [31:40]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah. And I'll always say I'm a. I'm a voice for choice. So I. I want people to be able to. To make a decision to electively be induced if that's something that they. That they want. At 39 weeks, they're tired of being pregnant. That's an option for you. I think that where we fail people in the induction conversation is knowing that, yes, there's elective and medical inductions, but regardless of the reason, we do not do a good enough job of preparing people for what an induction is like. We need to do a better job of explaining how long an induction can take. The longest induction I ever had was five days. Five days of induction and then still ended in a. In a C section. The methods of induction, there's different risks and benefits to each way that we. That we could induce you. But collaboration with your team on those ways can often get you to the goal of a safe, healthy vaginal delivery. More than coming in and saying, I'm going to do induction this way, I'm not going to ever reach for this induction method. I have had people come in to be Induced. And have zero idea of what they just signed up for. I've also had people come in with very specific plans on how they were going to be induced. One time. I'm gonna tell you this, Chelsea. One time. I'm here.
- [33:13]
Chelsea Clinton
I'm receiving all of it, Jen. Okay?
- [33:15]
Jen Hamilton
One time, I had a lady come in who was being induced, and she said, and this is a direct quote, I refuse to be induced using any other induction methods than my own induction techniques. And I said, okay. What are those, pray tell? It was nipple stimulation, which you do you, girl. But six hours of yanking on your nips. I mean, I don't know.
- [33:45]
Chelsea Clinton
To each their own, I guess, right?
- [33:47]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah. And then also, she wanted me to give her husband a cup. Can you see where this is going? Chelsea gave her husband a quantum meat to give her husband a cup of up to doodle. Is doodle into. Okay? And me involved in this process. Take that doodle and do a doodle. Doo into her. Okay, Listen, I'm all about informed and empowered decision making. Girl, that was too much for me. Did you.
- [34:20]
Chelsea Clinton
God, no.
- [34:21]
Jen Hamilton
Okay. Oh, my gosh. I said, thank you for the offer. I'm going to politely decline. And you know what I'll do? I'll even. I will shut this door, and I will let y'. All. Let y' all figure that out yourself. Okay? Oh, my gosh. But that was. That was an informed, empowered decision that I.
- [34:41]
Chelsea Clinton
That you made. That you made for yourself.
- [34:43]
Jen Hamilton
Made for myself and your.
- [34:44]
Chelsea Clinton
And your own professional boundaries.
- [34:46]
Jen Hamilton
Yes.
- [34:47]
Chelsea Clinton
You know, even my best friends never shared anything like that with me. No.
- [34:51]
Jen Hamilton
No. So. And you know about that. Like, it's awesome. It's great. But your body will only go into labor using those things if your body's ready, you know?
- [35:02]
Chelsea Clinton
Wow.
- [35:03]
Jen Hamilton
That, like, with the nipple stimulation stuff, like, you can bring on some contractions, but you're not going to full on go into labor with just nipple stimulation unless your body's already doing that. So for that particular person, I said, I will. I will support all your nipple needs. And after four hours, I said, are you tired? Are you exhausted? Are you okay? You know, how are they?
- [35:29]
Chelsea Clinton
Are you ready to try something else?
- [35:30]
Jen Hamilton
I think we ended up doing six hours of that. And I tried to tell her, like, take some breaks. Yeah, give them a break, girl.
- [35:37]
Chelsea Clinton
I hope there was a healthy baby at the end of that story.
- [35:40]
Jen Hamilton
Eventually. Yes.
- [35:41]
Chelsea Clinton
Fantastic.
- [35:42]
Jen Hamilton
Good few. I. Wow.
- [35:46]
Chelsea Clinton
And I do think maybe the area where there's the most intense debate, particularly given our differential rates here in the United States, is really around C sections. And it sounds like there too, not to be presumptuous, but given how consistent I think really admirably you've been, that's another area where you think expectant moms deserve whatever information you think is really evidence based, clinically valid, and then empowered to make whatever decisions they believe are right for them.
- [36:15]
Jen Hamilton
Exactly. I think that, you know, in recent years there's been a lot, especially on social media, you'll see a lot of people saying like, oh, your doctor just wants to give you a C section. That's all they want to do. Girl, let me tell you from the front lines, that is not how it is. It depends on your doctor. You know, because you can have a doctor that wants to do a C section of the first sign of trouble, which is not always the right answer. But at the same time you can pick a doctor with the lowest C section rate imaginable, which also means that they might not be doing C sections when they need to be. You know, I think a happy medium of those two numbers is, is the best for having a really balanced decision making process. But you know, you may have somebody who wants a doctor who's gonna cut at the first sign of trouble and you may want a doctor who's not gonna give you a C section. So I think that having a team that you trust is the most important when it comes to the C section decision.
- [37:23]
Chelsea Clinton
And what do you think people need to know about kind of the growing research into C sections or vaginal births as it relates to the child's ultimate microbiome?
- [37:37]
Jen Hamilton
So there is some research coming out about having bypassed the vagine. You know, that there's a lot of good bacteria down there that can be helpful to babies. Some people are even taking cloth and swiping their bejoozle biscuit and giving it to their baby as like a little something to snack on. That is everybody's prerogative of what, what they want to do. There also can be some not great goobies down there too, you know, so it's, it's a thing. I, I don't know that having a C section and you know, missing out on that vaginal microbiome is going to be an end all, be all problem for, for a baby. You know, I, I think that there's so many people walking around who are C section babies and you're not.
- [38:34]
Chelsea Clinton
I'm a C section baby. I was delivered by C section. I'm not gonna lie. Pretty healthy, thankfully.
- [38:39]
Jen Hamilton
You know what? I didn't look at you and think today, Chelsea. I didn't think. Man, I bet her microbiome sucks. You know, I didn't think that about you or like you're.
- [38:45]
Chelsea Clinton
That my head is misshapen. That's another thing that people say, that your head looks differently, your head delivers.
- [38:51]
Jen Hamilton
Your head's great. You have a great head. Thank you. I have to say I've never been
- [38:55]
Chelsea Clinton
worried about it, you know, and you shouldn't.
- [38:57]
Jen Hamilton
That's the thing. You shouldn't worry about it.
- [39:13]
Chelsea Clinton
My fifth marathon is right around the corner and so most of my free time these days when I'm not working or with my kids is spent on running or thinking about running or thinking about what else I should be doing for my training in addition to running. And I really don't want to have to worry about what I'm going to wear while running or cross training. And I really have loved the Feathertech short sleeve top from Fabletics, especially as the weather gets nicer here in New York City. The VIP membership also gives you access to Fabletics scrubs for the healthcare workers in your life. Their scrubs are made with durable water repellent fabric and your first scrub set is $15 when you check out as a new VIP member, Fabletics already has incredible deals and I'm really excited for an exclusive offer just for our listeners. You get 80% off everything when you sign up as a VIP with Fabletics. You can go to fabletics.com can't be true. Take a quick style quiz and be sure to select can't be True when prompted to unlock your 80% off. That's fabletics.com can'tbetrust. Jen before we move on to our final Fact or Fiction segment, where I'll toss some things out and you'll tell me if they're fact or fiction or if there's nuance. I know you recently went viral for sharing the number one question that you think every expectant mother should ask. What is that question and why do you think it's so critical?
- [40:42]
Jen Hamilton
So the question is, does your hospital or where you're delivering try to follow awhon, which is the association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses? Do they follow AWHON safe staffing standards? For too long, it has been kind of like a dirty little secret that hospitals are able to push the limits of safety by giving nurses more patients than are safe to care for. So AWON is an amazing organization that sets the standards for what that looks like on a perinatal unit. So in labor, a nurse should have no more than two patients ever, ever, ever, ever. And there's nuance to that because there's a lot of situations where they should be one on one. And so I think that going into your hospital experience, knowing that if they. I'm. I'm not even going to say, like, if. If you call them and they say, if they say no, that's. That's a red flag that they don't even try. That's a red flag. But I think that all hospitals should say we try because there's. There's always going to be, you know, surges. But it should be that most of the time that they're able to follow safe staffing standards. So I think that safety is paramount. And when we're giving nurses more patients than they can safely care for, we're going to have bad outcomes. And with the US Having the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, I think that skimping on staffing standards is absolutely atrocious. So I. I did get some flack from people within the hospital space who don't want people to know to ask that question. But. But just know you should ask that question. It's a question that should be. Should be one that hospitals should strive to achieve more than anything any other metric.
- [42:49]
Chelsea Clinton
Amen.
- [42:51]
Jen Hamilton
Amen. Hallelujah.
- [42:52]
Chelsea Clinton
Amen. Amen. Well, Jen, you know, we end each interview with a segment where, as mentioned, I'll throw out a series of claims, some of newer vintage, some probably of quite long duration, and you're gonna tell us whether they're fact or fiction.
- [43:12]
Jen Hamilton
Okay?
- [43:13]
Chelsea Clinton
Okay.
- [43:13]
Jen Hamilton
All right.
- [43:14]
Chelsea Clinton
A pregnant woman's belly shape predicts her baby's sex. Fact or fiction?
- [43:21]
Jen Hamilton
Wrong. There's all kinds of belly shapes, let me tell you. And I wish it was that easy, but no, it doesn't matter.
- [43:29]
Chelsea Clinton
Spicy food and castor oil can help induce labor. Fact or fiction?
- [43:33]
Jen Hamilton
Oh, okay. Nuance. Because the spicy food one. Eh, not really. Like I said, nothing is going to bring you into labor until your body's ready. Now, the castor oil thing. Oh, please don't give castor oil. So castor oil is gonna make you. Can I cuss sure. Your mother effing brains out. That's the point, okay. It increases that gastric motility to get things moving and grooving. Okay. It also can make your baby poop inside of you.
- [44:08]
Chelsea Clinton
Okay. So now thinking about all of my friends who definitely drank a lot of casserole.
- [44:13]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah. So it can make your baby poop inside of you. And that baby poop is called meconium. Meconium. Aspiration is something that can happen when babies have poop in their lungs. And that poop is very sticky. It can cause fetal distress. It. It's just. Don't do it.
- [44:32]
Chelsea Clinton
Don't do it. Okay. Yeah. When your water breaks, it's always dramatic and noticeable.
- [44:38]
Jen Hamilton
No. Yeah. I have people who are, like, who come in, and, like, I've just kind of. Kind of been dripping for the past couple days, and it turns out that their water broke a couple days ago. But you can have something where, you know, maybe the water. And when we say water broke, like, you're. It's really the bag. Think of your baby like, in a big Ziploc bag, and it's like, poking a little hole in one of the spots. But it could be high up to where it's just kind dripping. Also, your baby's head can kind of cork off your cervix. And so maybe if you move weird, like, you'll feel a gush or like, it doesn't always look like.
- [45:12]
Chelsea Clinton
It's not always like the movies.
- [45:14]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah, exactly. It can be, but not always. I'm gonna say not most of the time. It's like that. It's more like a drip or a little gush or, you know, things that you notice. But the main point is that it kind of keeps happening and you don't feel like you're peeing. Those are. And also, fun fact, if you sniff it, like, if you're not sure and you sniff it, obviously pee is going to smell like pee. Right. Amniotic fluid smells like sperm. What? It does. It smells like. Come. Just want to say, put that out there. It's got that, like, chemically like chlorine. What? I. How did I not know that? Yes, it's true. It's true. I did have a patient one time is like, my mind is blown. She said, I think my water broke. And there was, like, a little bit of something on there. She's like, I don't know if I peed or not. I was like, oh, you know, we'll figure it out. And I went behind the curtain and I sniffed it.
- [46:14]
Chelsea Clinton
You're a nurse. That's you.
- [46:15]
Jen Hamilton
I do. But I didn't want her see. I didn't want her to see me, like, sniffing her. What? And I said, I came out from behind the curtain, and Cilla deliberately announced, pass the sniff test. Your water broke. And then I realized she probably didn't know that I was back there sniffing her panties. Oh, my gosh.
- [46:39]
Chelsea Clinton
So.
- [46:40]
Jen Hamilton
All right, well, I Was just going
- [46:41]
Chelsea Clinton
to ask a couple more. Yeah, okay. Only 5% of babies are born on their due date. Fact or fiction?
- [46:47]
Jen Hamilton
Yeah, it's, it's, that's true. Yeah, they, they do not come when we've told them that they should. The due date is just a guest date and your baby doesn't really care. One thing I do want to say is that, that a harmful thing that I hear people say is babies come when they're ready. Which I hate that freaking phrase because sometimes babies don't come when they're ready. Sometimes babies come at 23 weeks, they're not ready. Then babies do come when they come, but not always when they're ready.
- [47:13]
Chelsea Clinton
So eating your placenta prevents postpartum depression.
- [47:18]
Jen Hamilton
There's no scientific data that, that says that that is true. There is anecdotal data where people say, you know, I did consume my placenta. I feel great. I feel awesome. I feel different pregnancy where I didn't do that. So my thing is you do you boo. Had somebody one time who brought a blender and raw dogged a smoothie of that immediately. So you do you boo.
- [47:48]
Chelsea Clinton
Oh, my gosh. I have this vivid memory of when I was pregnant the first time. My doctor was like, do you think you're going to bring anything with you or is there anything you think you're gonna like, need or want? And I was like, my, my husband. And now I'm disappointed. I didn't have a better answer for her.
- [48:05]
Jen Hamilton
Bring a ninja.
- [48:05]
Chelsea Clinton
I mean, next time. I'm like, yeah, shoot.
- [48:08]
Jen Hamilton
I know it's a missed opportunity.
- [48:10]
Chelsea Clinton
I really was. Jen. What? Just so many things. So many things. Last thing I just want to ask is like, if you're feeling a little off, a little different, if you're hurting a little, reach out to your doctor or your midwife. Fact or fit?
- [48:26]
Jen Hamilton
100.
- [48:27]
Chelsea Clinton
100.
- [48:28]
Jen Hamilton
100%. Absolutely. And there are lots of things in pregnancy that suck and are normal. You know, aches and pains, that kind of stuff.
- [48:36]
Chelsea Clinton
But always better to ask.
- [48:37]
Jen Hamilton
Always better ask. And another thing, I just want to put a plug. If your baby is not moving how they normally move, get into the hospital immediately. Don't talk yourself out of it. Don't get a Doppler and listen for your baby's heartbeat. Because the last thing a stillborn baby ever has is a heartbeat. So just having a heartbeat is not a measure of, of fetal well being. So I hear people say, like towards the end of pregnancy, oh, your baby's running out of room.
- [49:06]
Chelsea Clinton
That's.
- [49:07]
Jen Hamilton
No, no, you can be in a tight ass sleeping bag and still be able to wiggle a little bit, you know. So know that there's an app, this is not sponsored, but there's an app that people can use called Count the Kicks and it gets to know your baby's particular movements so that if they change it tells you like, hey, this is different than it was was. So go into the hospital.
- [49:28]
Chelsea Clinton
Jen, thank you so much. I've learned so much. I think this is going to help a lot of people and just really incredibly grateful for, yes, the laughter today, but even more as always for the empowering information. Really grateful. Thank you.
- [49:44]
Jen Hamilton
Thank you so much, Chelsea. Have a great day.
- [49:45]
Chelsea Clinton
You too. You can follow Jen on Instagram and I hope you'll grab her book Birth Vibes, wherever you like to buy your books. Thanks for listening and talk to you next week. That Can't Be True is a production of Limonada Media and the Clinton Foundation. The show is produced by Katherine Barnes, mix and sound design by Johnny Vince Evans. Kristin Lepore is Senior Director of New Content and Jackie Danziger is VP of Narrative and Production. Maggie Kralshore is our Managing Director of Partnerships. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer, Stephanie Whittles, Wax, and me, Chelsea Clinton. Special thanks to Erica Goodmanson, Sarah Horowitz, Francesca Ernst Kahn, Caroline Lewis, Sage Valter, Barry Lurie Westerberg, Emily Young, and the entire team at the Clinton Foundation. You can help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. And if you can think of someone who might benefit from today's episode, please go ahead and share it with them. There's more of that can't be true with Lemonada. Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. You can also listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.